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Breadfruit
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Posted: Friday September 29th, 2006 13:47 |
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Death in Brixton
Winston Smith
Andy Beckett’s “Death in Woolwich� centres on Daniel Williams killing Norman Francis in Woolwich, south-east London, on October 15, 2001. Beckett’s alleged theme is each death has outcomes, “aftershocks�. They affect not only the victim’s family but also everyone involved (1).
Beckett does not describe Francis’ death as a black-on-black. However, he does say: “Francis was, Williams is, black�. As a result, he does get across his message: it was black-on-black, a phenomenon the Guardian informs its readers about regularly (2).
Beckett could have written an article focusing on the “aftershocks� from the murder of Marcia Lawes by Delroy Denton in Brixton on April 15, 1995. Marcia Lawes was, Denton is, black. Like Francis, Lawes had two children (blink 24/10/02).
Unlike Williams, the police could have stopped Denton killing Lawes. On May 12 1994, during a raid on the Atlantic pub in Brixton, police arrested Denton. They found out he had entered Britain from Jamaica illegally. They bribed him into becoming an informer in exchange for a salary and not deporting him. One year on, when he murdered Marcia Lawes, Denton was still an illegal immigrant on police payroll (3).
If the Metropolitan police had deported Denton when they arrested him in 1994, the “aftershocks� suffered by Marcia Lawes’ family would not have began with her murder in April 1995.
Beckett does not write about Marcia Lawes because his article’s real theme is less to do with the “aftershocks� from Francis’ death. His theme is more to do with recycling police propaganda, which stereotype Jamaicans as the personification of “ruthlessness and ruthlessness�: doubly ruthless (4).
Beckett’s article hints at the Guardian’s ongoing connection with the Metropolitan police anti-Jamaican propaganda. The connection goes to back the 1980s when police first tried to link Jamaican Yardies to crack cocaine and gun violence. In 1997, for example, the Guardian set out to justify the disastrous results of such racial profiling, including Lawes’ murder, in an article by Nick Davies: “How the Yardie duped the Yard� (5).
Davies starts off by outlining what he claims was the “chaotic background� which led the Metropolitan police to hire killers as informers. First, “the Yardies who dominate the global sale of crack cocaine … engage in ferocious violence� (6). Second, by 1987, Yardies posed a threat to national security. Third, political correctness and pitiful funding led to “a strategy of chaos�, which left the police powerless to face up to “a ruthless enemy�.
According to Davies this “strategy of chaos� ended when DCS Roy Clark, “one of the most experience detectives in London got his hands on the problem�. Clark wrote a “confidential report, which was a devastating exposé of the [police’s] behaviour�.
Clark made 35 recommendations in his report. But “policy-makers at Scotland Yard� only acted on his chief point, the setting up of the National Drug Related Violence Intelligence Unit (NDRVIU).
Opened in August 1993, NDRVIU aimed to confront the Yardie threat. Alas starved of “power and leadership�, NDRVIU soon ran into trouble.
It is Davies thesis that after NDRVIU “opened�, lack of “power and leadership� led the police to bend the law by hiring killers, such as Delroy Denton, as informers.
Davies’ cause and effect thesis is believable only if readers accept his chain of events as right.
An alternative chain of events runs thus. In the 1980s, as a pretext for setting up an anti-black unit, the Metropolitan police imported from America a link between crack cocaine, crime and black people.
In April 1989, the Association of Chief Police of Officers invited Robert Stutman, chief of New York Drug Enforcement Agency, to speak at its conference (Small 1995:401).
Stutman made two “apocalyptic warnings� about crack cocaine. He warned ACPO, “I will personally guarantee you that, two years from now, you will have a serious crack problem� (7).
Stutman’s other warning concerned the findings of what he said was a soon to be published report. These findings he said would show three-quarter of people who try crack get hooked after three tries (ISDD: 1989).
Both warnings were wrong. First, according to the Home Office, “in 1993 police seized 2.8kg [of crack], nearly double the figures for the previous year� (Shapiro 1994:13). Second, on July 27 1989, the Independent revealed the report to which Stutman referred did not exist.
Nonetheless, at Scotland Yard, Stutman warnings reinforced race based policing. Yardies, police-speak for Jamaicans, were the target of various strategies. One was to set up a “Yardie Squad� (Small 1995:393). Another was to recruit informers to infiltrate so-called Yardie gangs. These informers were recruited by SO10, the section of the Metropolitan police that handles informants.
As well as Delroy Denton, the other informers who Davies says committed crimes while on police payroll were Eaton Green and Andrew Gold. Their role as informers featured in “The Infiltrators�, a book written by two detectives, Etienne and Maynard. They renamed Eaton Green “Aldridge Clarke� and Andrew Gold “Skank�. Etienne was seconded to SO10 to chaperon Gold.
Like Davies, Etienne and Maynard claim SO10 began recruiting Yardie informers “once the NDRVIU was up and running� (Etienne and Maynard 2001:107). However by cross-referencing dates provided by Davies, Etienne and Maynard it becomes clear that SO10 recruited Green and Gold before NDRVIU opened in August 1993.
Eaton Green was “the first true Yardie ever� to become a police informer (Etienne and Maynard 2001:108). Green was on the run from the law in Jamaica when he settled in Brixton in February 1991. Constable Steve Barker arrested him in May. Barker knew Green was an illegal immigrant, a fugitive who sold crack cocaine and carried firearms in Brixton (8). Yet after his arrest, S010 recruited Green. And set him free to carry on his criminal activities, sometimes helped by the Barker.
In March 1993, for example, Barker knowingly allowed Green to bring Cecil Thompson and Rohan ‘Bumpy’ Thompson into Britain from Jamaica unlawfully. The trio then went on to robbed 150 people at gunpoint at a blues dance in Nottingham on May 30 1993 (9).
Green was not the only one to bring known criminals into the country. According to Davies, “on a trip to Jamaica in the summer of 1993�, someone “introduced a professional man� to Steve Barker. It turned out that the man had worked as a police informer in America. What’s more, Yardies “respected� him. SO10 recruited him, “code-named him Andrew Gold� and bought him to London to infiltrate and inform on local Yardies.
Davies’ story about how S010 recruited Gold, his arrival in Britain and the length of his stay is at odds with Etienne’s version of the same events. Etienne claims: “A team of senior officers from Scotland Yard travelled to Kingston, Jamaica, with the expressed intention of recruiting active Yardie gangsters to work as informants in London� (Etienne and Maynard 2001:109). In other words, Gold’s recruitment was not as casual as Davies tries to make it look.
As regard the date of his arrival, Davies claims Gold returned to Jamaica after “four months …in January 1994�. Gold, therefore, would have had to arrive in Britain in August 1993. Etienne contradicts Davies on this point.
Etienne claims he started a six-week secondment to SO10 “a month before Skank [Gold] arrived in the country� (Etienne and Maynard 2001:110). SO10 assigned Etienne to get Gold familiar with London.
In September, he met Gold at Heathrow airport (Etienne and Maynard 2001:116). In October, Etienne’s boss complained to him that his six-week secondment had mushroomed into “three months!� (Etienne and Maynard 2001:130).
By mid-November: “After two and a half months Skank [Gold] had found his feet� (Etienne and Maynard 2001:133).
Crucially, Etienne then claims “By May I had not spoken to Skank [Gold] for three months� (Etienne and Maynard 2001:134).
Given that Gold, Skank, entered Britain in September and he was still going to “a weekly debriefing session at Scotland Yard with his handler� in May, he could not have returned to Jamaica in January 1994 as Davies claims (5).
This leaves the question of whether SO10 recruited Gold and brought him to Britain in 1992 or 1993. Etienne is especially helpful on this point. At the end of May, the very same month in which he spoke to Gold for the first time in three months, the Eaton Green trio robbed the blues dance in Nottingham (Etienne and Maynard 2001:135-136). The robbery took place in May 1993 (8).
Therefore, the informer Davies calls “Andrew Gold� and Etienne calls “Skank�, one and the same person, SO10 recruited him and bought him to Britain in 1992. That is one year before Clark signed his report on July 6 1993 and NDRVIU opened in August 1993.
Davies’ chain of events would therefore seem to be fictional. Political correctness and pitiful funding did not lead to “a strategy of chaos� which Roy Clark remedied by recommending setting up NDRVIU. More accurately, institutional racism led to racial profiling becoming the cornerstone of policing.
The upshot was a police force, which Davies claims was so poor it had to use a pub as offices, had money to send “a team of senior officers� to Jamaica. From where they recruited criminals recommended to them by “Clarke [Green] and other informants� (Etienne and Maynard 2001:106).
On his arrival from Jamaica, police housed Gold in a luxury hotel. They gave him a Golf Gti and mobile phone. The bills for them, the police paid plus other living expenses such as food, wine, clothes, and the rent of a dockland flat, which cost £550 per week. Plus he received “ a lifestyle payment of £500 per week� (Etienne and Maynard 2001:116,118,133).
Eaton Green also enjoyed police largess: “he regularly received fees of £1,000 a time� (Etienne and Maynard 2001:108).
By contrast, black people suffered the “aftershocks� from the Metropolitan police infiltrating killers and crack cocaine dealers into their communities. In particular, like Marcia Lawes, the 150 people robbed by Green and Co were black.
Marcia Lawes’ murder by Denton might just be one of a number of innocent black people gun down by gunmen on police payroll.
The “aftershocks� from such murders left victims’ family struggling to get to the truth and compensation from the police. For example, the Metropolitan police have steadfastly refused Lawes’ family compensation that would be used to care for her two young children (10).
If the Guardian focuses more on the “aftershocks� caused by the actions of police paid killers and crack dealers rather than recycling anti-Jamaican propaganda, there will be less grieving black families and friends and drugs in communities such as Brixton and Woolwich.
Bibliography
Etienne, Philip and Maynard Martin (2001) “The Infiltrator� Penguin Books
Small, Geoff (1995) “Ruthless: the global rise of the Yardies� Warner Books
Shapiro, Harry (1994) “The Crack Report� Institute for the Study of Drug Dependence
Newspapers
(1) Beckett, Andy (11/03/04) “Death in Woolwich� The Guardian
(2) Vasagar, J and Hopkins, N (01/08/00) “Yardie war moves to the streets� The Guardian
(3) Muir, Hugh (04/04/97) “Victim’s family attacks use of Yardie informers� The Daily Telegraph
(4) Muir, Hugh (20/09/03) “Police to build on success in black on black crime initiative� The Guardian
(5) Davies, Nick (3/02/97) “How the Yardies duped the Yard� The Guardian
(6) Davies, Nick (03/02/97) “Police Yardie scandal� The Guardian
(7) Bose, Mihir (13/08/90) Nightmare that never happened� The Daily Mail
(8) Davies, Nick (16/03/99) “Police damned over Yardies� The Guardian
(9) The Guardian (16/07/99) “Police face no charges over Yardie informer who killed�
(10) Dodd, Vikram (24/10/02) “Murder victim’s family to sue police� The Guardian
Internet
Blink (24/10/02) “Marcia Lawes family can now seek compensation�
winston smith © blaqfair 1984
http://www.blaqfair.co.uk/blaqfair/biglie/brixton.htm
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Breadfruit
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Posted: Saturday September 30th, 2006 20:59 |
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Police face no charges over Yardie informer who killed
Friday July 16, 1999
The Guardian
No police officers will be prosecuted over the case of a Yardie gangster who murdered a mother while he was a Scotland Yard informant, it has been announced.
The crown prosecution service (CPS) said there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone over the controversial policy of recruiting Jamaican gangsters as informers.
The decision followed an inquiry into the Met's recruitment of informants, sparked by the 1995 murder of Marcia Lawes by Delroy Denton.
Denton, a Jamaican gangster, had been allowed to stay in the country to help police tackle serious crime but was jailed for life in 1996 for the rape and murder of Miss Lawes at her flat in Brixton, south London.
Another gangster Eaton Green jumped bail in Jamaica in February 1991, settled in Brixton and was involved in dealing crack cocaine.
After being arrested, he provided intelligence to police but continued using guns and dealing in crack.
He was finally caught after robbing 150 people at gunpoint at a party in Nottingham in 1993. He was jailed for six years for armed robbery and possession of firearms.
The police complaints authority (PCA) commissioned an investigation by the Hampshire chief constable, Sir John Hoddinott, who submitted his report last October.
The CPS considered charges including manslaughter through gross negligence, misconduct in public office and immigration act offences.
But the CPS and senior treasury counsel agreed that no officers should be charged.
To prove the misconduct charge, "deliberate failure or wilful neglect" by officers would have to be shown.
Mike Franklin, chairman of the Lambeth Community and Police Consultative Group which has been campaigning for and supporting the Lawes family, said: "I'm very disappointed by this decision. This was a very serious matter."
A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said: "No criminal proceedings are to be taken against the officers involved in the handling of Eaton Green and another alleged informant. Disciplinary proceedings are still to be considered by the PCA."
A raid on a Brixton pub in 1993 first brought Denton to the police's attention as a potential informant. He was arrested for possessing a gun and small amount of drugs but gave a false name.
But after questioning by an immigration official, he revealed his violent past in Jamaica and he was recruited by Scotland Yard. He supplied "high grade" information about Yardies to the police but was finally charged in December 1995.
John O'Connor, the former head of the Flying Squad, said: "With hindsight, he was not a suitable person for the police to use."
A review last year recommended that each informant be assessed for potential risk and informants should not be brought into the UK except in "exceptional circumstances."
The Met last year revealed that it had thousands of informants helping officers, with about 25% from the black community.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/gun/Story/0,2763,205964,00.html
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Breadfruit
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Posted: Monday October 2nd, 2006 11:29 |
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The Destabilization Question' from 'Politics in Jamaica'
by Anthony J. Payne
THE CHARGE
The concept of destabilisation first entered the vocabulary of Jamaican politics early in 1976 when senior members of the PNP government, including the Prime Minister , began to allege that a systematic campaign was being waged by local and foreign forces against their very right to govern. According to Michael Manley, ‘destabilisation describes a situation where some source either inside or outside a country-or perhaps two sources working in concept , one outside and one inside -set out to create a situation of instability and panic by design.'[1]
The word had entered the lexicon of political analysis two or three years earlier because of events in Chile. As a result of a series of US senate investigations conducted in the cathartic atmosphere of Watergate , it had been clearly demonstrated that American multinational corporations had worked hand-in-hand with US governmental agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and with the Chilean military and other local reactionary elements first to destabilize, as the phrase had it, and then ultimately to overthrow the constitutionally elected socialist government of Salvador Allende.
At the time when the Chilean coup occurred in September 1973, US officials-from the Secretary of State Henry Kissinger downwards-denied complicity , little realizing how soon their involvement would be revealed by Congressional investigation. In that respect, at least, it was the same in Jamaica. In June 1976 Kissinger himself was quoted as telling PNP Foreign Affairs minister Dudley Thompson that he was ‘not aware of any action by the US government designed to weaken the government of Prime Minister Manley'; in the same month Deputy Assistant Secretary of State William Luers categorically denied before a house of Representatives committee that ‘the US government is doing anything to undermine or destabilize government of Jamaica'; and the US ambassador to Jamaica , summer Gerard , pointedly told group of Kingston businessmen that ‘allegations of US destabilisation are scurrilous and false.'[2]
Such denials were predictable and were given publicity by the Jamaican government , which wanted to avoid , if possible , getting into the position of having to accuse the US administration directly. Yet it manifestly was not convinced. Its real view was expressed in an overseas interview given by the Minister of National Security , Keble Munn, in defence of the declaration of a state of emergency which was the government's response to the alleged destabilisation campaign. ‘We've got all kinds of assurances from the United States government that they are not involved in destabilisation', he said, ‘and we would like to be in a position to take them at face value.' But, he went on, ‘everyone knows what happened in Chile , although no one could prove who was behind it until afterwards , when Watergate came along.'[3]
After the PNP won the general election of December 1976 other concerns, notably the International Monetary Fund (IMF), came to the forefront of political debate in Jamaica, and less was heard openly of destabilisation. Yet the question did not go away, and was forcefully resurrected by Manley himself in a subsequent account of his period in office in which he argued ‘that Jamaica was destabilised, as we have defined the word.' [4] Although claiming that the campaign was pursued consistently between 1976 and 1980, his focus was on 1976 as the critical year. Indeed, in an appendix , a ‘destabilisation diary' for 1876 was provided , itemizing the events which in his view formed part of the campaign.
Summary of the entries for just the one month of January gives the flavour and some of the detail of Manley's case.
January 2: The election year begins ominously when the Daily Gleaner published an editorial replete with lies, half-truths and malicious speculation , titled ‘If he fails...' The editor of the paper was Mr. Hector Wynter, a former chairman of and candidate for the JLP.
January 4: The Us secretary of State, Henry Kissinger , left Jamaica , unsuccessful in his mission to dissuade Manley from supporting the presence of Cuban troops in Angola. Despite this failure, he assured Manley that there was no CIA interference in Jamaica, but did not add that the CIA station in Kingston had just been strengthened by the arrival of a new chief, Norman Descoteaux, a man with recent field experience in Argentina and Ecuador where it was thought other destabilisation campaigns had previously taken place.
January 5 : As officials of the IMF and World Bank held meetings for a conference subsequently to be held in Kingston, violence erupted in the ghettoes of the western sector of the city, thus providing material for a number of sensational articles filed by the large corps of foreign journalists reporting the IMF meeting.
January 6 : The Minister of National Security announced the apprehension of 19 members of a group of gunmen being trained for operations against the government.
January 7: Two policemen were killed and three others injured in attacks by gunmen, provoking a stoppage of work at the police barracks until the men were personally persuaded to return to duty by Manley.
January 8: Deputy Prime Minister , David Coore, held a press conference for foreign journalists to try to counteract the exaggerated reporting of the violence which had already caused extensive tourist cancellations.
January 9: As the violence continued , Manley announced new legislation to revitalize the Gun Court: mandatory life imprisonment for illegal possession of a firearm
January 11: Against this background Manley announced his party's proposal to establish community self-defence groups to act as an unarmed warning service and was met with a barrage of criticism alleging , inter alia, that he planned to introduce the "Ton Ton Macoutes' to Jamaica.
January 12: An article in the Wall Street Journal claimed that the PNP government was the ‘most inept of al the Western governments that fancies itself democratic.' January 14: Revere Copper and Brass Inc. announced that its Jamaican subsidiary, Revere Ja. Ltd., was suing the Manley government over its bauxite levy.
January 15: The traditionally dormant middle-class , Soroptimist club of Kingston passed a resolution calling on women to withdraw their services from their employers and communities as well as their husbands and families to protest against political violence.
January 16 : Allan Issacs , Minister of Mining and Natural Resources was dismissed from the Cabinet for alleged leaking of government documents to the opposition and subsequently resigned from the PNP, alleging that the government was intent upon establishing Cuban style communism.
January 24 : 13 people died in the eastern parish of St. Thomas after eating flour subsequently found to have been contaminated with the poison parathion. [5]
And so the diary went of , charting the unfolding of events during the rest of 1976 in a similar vein. As can be seen, it tells a grim story of disruption and violence. Does it amount to destabilisation? Is the charge laid by Manley susceptible to proof? To answer these questions we need to assess to the available evidence as carefully and cooly as possible.
THE EVIDENCE
The main problem with what one might call the case for the prosecution , as outlined above , is that it ranges loosely over a variety of types of evidence and in doing so cannot but identify several different agents of destabilisation. Admittedly , part of the case is that a number of agencies work in collusion in such campaigns-each hand, as it were, not necessarily knowing in detail what the other is up to. Nevertheless , from an analytical point of view it makes sense to consider the activities of the alleged perpetrators of destabilisation agency by agency.
The bauxite companies.
There is no doubt that the multinational bauxite companies operating in Jamaica were disturbed by the implications of the production levy imposed by the PNP government in 1974. By tying the level of local taxation to the actual market price of aluminum rather than the arbitrary price at which the companies ‘transferred' Jamaican bauxite to their processing plants in North America , the agreement interfered with the traditional vertical integration of the industry under constant corporate control.
Although they could survive such a policy , the companies chose to fight back , initially by threatening to withdraw completely from their Jamaican mining operations (although this was not a likely option) and then by filing a suit with the World Bank's International Centre for the settlement of Investment Disputes contesting the legality of the government levy. More seriously from Jamaica's point of view , they also moved to cut back their production of both bauxite and alumina in the island , thereby undermining the government ‘s revenue expectations and adding to local unemployment.
While some of the reductions in production were caused by the recession in the international economy , it cannot be denied that Jamaica suffered disproportionately. According to one analysis , while US companies doubled their bauxite imports from African sources in Guinea in 1975, they cut their Jamaican imports by 30%.[6]
In addition the number of strikes in the industry in Jamaica doubled between 1974 and 1975, and doubled their again in 1976-an escalation of industrial action attributed by a number of local observers to deliberately provocative behaviour by a management bent on further disruption of the local economy.[7]
The effect was certainly damaging : the Jamaica Bauxite Institute estimated that an 81-day strike at Alcoa, a 43-day shut-down at Alpart and a 35-day strike at Alcan during the first 6 months of 1976 cost the industry over 400, 000 tonnes of Bauxite production.[8] The companies also conducted a US press campaign blaming Jamaica for the rising cost of aluminum , e.g. claiming that higher car prices were the result of action of the Manley government. As sherry Keith and Robert Girling pointed out, however, the truth was that price increases in the US market bore little, if any relation to the Jamaican levy and served mainly to boost corporate profits at a time of lower production worldwide.[9]
The US Government.
The US government also played a part in exerting economic pressure on Jamaica as a response to the bauxite levy. The Treasury Department , in particular , wanted to stop new official lending to the country , arguing that it would give the wrong signal to provide aid to a regime which was in dispute with several US corporations.[10]
A small US AID rural development loan was cancelled , and agreement was reached within the administration that no new capital assistance should be provided while the legality of the levy was still being tested. The State Department acquiesced in these moves , although apparently with some reluctance.[11]
Manley has reported that he had an affable meeting with Kissinger in 1974 at which he believed that he had forestalled any US hostility to the levy.[12] He may indeed have been right , for it is difficult to imagine that the US government's reaction could have been considerably more vigorous than it actually was. Time was to demonstrate this, especially once the Jamaican government had begun to establish closer diplomatic links with Cuba. For example, Manley has also described a very different meeting with Kissinger during a short vacation the secretary of State spent in Jamaica towards the end of 1975.
‘Suddenly he raised the question of Angola and said he would appreciate it if Jamaica would at least remain neutral on the subject of the Cuban army presence in Angola. I told him that I could make no promises but would pay the utmost attention to his request.'[13]
Kissinger then apparently brought up the separate matter of a Jamaican request for US$100 million trade credit. ‘He said they were looking at it, and let the comment hang in the room for a moment. I had the feeling that he was sending me message.'[14]
In Manley's mind the linkage was clear, but nevertheless five days later he publically announced Jamaica's support for Cuban involvement in Angola. The result was that US economic aid to Jamaica was embargoed till the end of the Ford administration. This had increasingly serious effects on the level of activity within the Jamaican economy during the course of 1976, although it should immediately be added that the advent of the Carter administration at the beginning of 1977 quickly brought a new , albeit temporary , warmth to US-Jamaican relations and the resumption of aid flows.
The CIA
Although obviously an agency of the US government , the CIA needs to be considered separately because of the presumption that its activities will remain clandestine? It is possible for US administration to adopt covertly a different policy towards a particular country from the one to which it is publically committed. Was this the case with Jamaica in 1976?
Several observers have claimed that this was precisely the situation , the most significant of them being Philip Agee.
After twelve years working as a CIA agent in Latin America, Agee resigned in 1969 and devoted himself to exposing his former employer's operations around the world. He arrived in Jamaica in September 1976 as a guest of the Jamaican Council for Human rights and during his two-week stay spoke at a number of packed meetings , stirring up great controversy as he proceeded.
He claimed to be able to identify in Jamaica at the time all the typical CIA methods of destabilisation . These included spreading false information in the local and international press, funding opposition groupings , supplying arms to opponents of the government , and helping all manner of social disruption by means of arson , murder and industrial action. Agee also specifically named 11 US embassy personnel in Kingston as working for the CIA , three of whom immediately left the county in what was widely taken to be a tacit admission of guilt.
His accusations were given renewed publicity by an article in the December 1977 issue of Penthouse magazine[15]-an unusual medium-which reported that at the end of 1975 Kissinger had agreed to the implementation of such a campaign against the Manley regime and that early in 1976 the CIA station in the island had been reorganized, bringing in Deccoteaux as the new chief with a budget of US$10 million to spend on various covert activities.
Detailed description of these apparent activities subsequently appeared regularly in the pages of specialist American magazines like Counterspy.
The US Press One of Agee's claims was that the CIA was able to inspire articles in the US press which would have the effect of undermining and eventually destroying the reputation of a particular government in the minds of the US public. Again , a number commentators have claimed that this is what occurred over Jamaica in 1976. For example, Manley's own account notes that, shortly after news broke that Jamaica was supporting Cuba in the Angola conflict, James Reston of the New York Times wrote ‘a vicious and utterly inaccurate article'[16] about Jamaica , which seemed to start off a chain reaction in the US pres.
In the course of 1976 a series of articles appeared in such influential papers and magazines as the Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Post, Time and Newsweek, many of which gave the distinct impression that there had been a virtual Cuban military takeover in Jamaica. Violence was highlighted and often used in politically biassed ways. One striking example was a story in the New York Times in 1976, printed under the headline ‘Jamaican Opposition Leader is Shot at from Office of Ruling Party but Escapes Injury.' It was given great prominence, but later found to be utterly untrue; only a short correction was then published.[17]
Moreover, academic analysis shows that such a distorted interpretation of events was not at all untypical. Marlene Cuthbert and Verone Sparkes studied the coverage of Jamaica in the US press in 1976 and concluded that a preponderance of articles took an overwhelmingly negative view of Jamaica , emphasising political tensions and often employing crude Cold War language in the presentation of events. [18] The effect of this type of reporting on the tourist trade remains controversial . That the number of visitors coming to Jamaica fell dramatically in 1976 and again in 1977 is certain,[19] something which many have attributed to the generally violent image presented of Jamaica despite the fact that the killings were largely confined to the Kingston area , far from the tourist enclaves on the north coast.
Yet Cuthbert and Sparkes demonstrate that , although the coverage of Jamaica in the US and Canada was equally negative, the Canadian public demonstrated a significantly greater willingness to continue holidaying in Jamaica. They speculate that the difference could well stem from the role of travel agents , the American ones they interviewed generally being readier to believe the press stories.[20]
For those who think in conspiracy terms, the evil hand of the CIA can thus be made to appear as effectively infiltrating the US travel industry. Jamaican Opposition Jamaican participants have also been identified by destabilisation theorists. They include local businessmen , JLP politicians and the owners and writers of the Daily Gleaner. It is certainly true that by 1976 Jamaican capitalists no longer had the confidence that some of them had initially places in Manley. The declaration of socialism was more than they could tolerate , especially in circumstances of increasing economic contraction.
Factories began to close and energy was put into smuggling wealth out of the island to Miami and other parts of the North American continent, all of which further damaged the economy.
As soon as Seaga took over the leadership, the JLP also began to campaign vigorously throughout the island against the PNP's vision of socialism , engaging in such an extensive and costly range of meetings and propaganda activities as to arouse suspicion that it was drawing on resources beyond the means of its local backers. Its pitch was simplistically anti-communist, echoing much of the US press coverage and some US government opinion, but it was no less effective for that. It was also able to draw on the unstinting support of the Daily Gleaner , which of course was owned by one of Jamaica's richest capitalist families. Beginning at the end of 1975, it launched an astonishing barrage of vituperation against the PNP and Manley in particular.
Its favourite themes were the familiar areas of the communist threat and the Cuban link. The Gleaner has always been a conservative newspaper, but it has traditionally worn and air of sober and serious respectability. Its abandonment of these values prompted the accusation that it too was playing a role on behalf of external interests. For example Fred Landis , who had been a consultant to the US Senate sub-committee which had investigated the CIA's covert action in Chile, prepared a pamphlet for the Press Association of Jamaica. This unhesitatingly compared the Gleaner's role with that played in helping to overthrow the Allende regime by the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio, which had consistently and scurrilously attacked Allende and his colleagues and was shown subsequently to have received CIA finance and encouragement to do so.[21]
THE VERDICT
What is to be made of all this evidence? In some areas, the facts appear very plain. Despite the mildness of the move, the bauxite companies did punish the Manley government for its institution of the levy; the US government under Kissinger and Ford did become increasingly unsupportive; the press was always imprecise and often hysterical in its reporting of events in Jamaica; and the PNP's opponents in the country were frequently vicious and unfair in their attacks on the government.
In other areas , as one would expect, the evidence is less categoric. In particular, the involvement of the CIA has not been proved, which is to say it has not been admitted by official US government spokesmen. On the other hand, the circumstantial evidence that its agents were active in Jamaica in 1976 is strong-too strong , finally, to be ignored.
Even so, the problem remains of what all this adds up to. For the issue at stake is really a matter of definition. What does destabilisation mean? One should distinguish between a ‘narrow' and a ‘broad' definition. Understood in the broadest terms , as is often is, the concept too easily becomes a misleading shorthand expression for the fact that the world which radical governments take on is generally hostile to their aims.
Opposition is generated by policies of change because powerful vested interests feel threatened , and they react.
This should not be considered surprising or beyond the capacity of radical leaders to anticipate. For example, the bauxite companies pursued in connection with Jamaica nothing other than their corporate interests, as these are conventionally interpreted by big business. The US government , like any other government , does not have to feel well disposed towards the government of every country with which it has relations, let alone assist it with aid and credit.
Much of the Western press is also sadly sensationalist in its interpretation of political events all over the world , not merely in Jamaica. As for the alleged treachery of the local opposition , the anxieties of Jamaican business men in the face of the Manley regime's stridently socialist rhetoric in 1976 are surely not difficult to explain. In terms of thee business ethic, it made good sense to shift investment out of Jamaica. The JAP , for its part, certainly exceeded some of the boundaries traditionally imposed on an opposition by the Westminster system, but politics in the third world is a rough game and Jamaica is no exception.
In other words, there were all factors which the PAP should have been prepared to deal with.
There is not really much to be gained by grouping them all together and claiming that they represent destabilisation. If that is so, every radical government must face destabilisation , simply because the system it is pledged to attack still exists and will fight back.
At this point the argument becomes unprofitable and is best abandoned.
However, the concept of destabilisation can take on new force when it is understood in narrower terms. It would refer specifically to a deliberate and coordinated campaign instigated from outside a particular country and designed to undermine support for the government of tat country.
The tactics of such a campaign typically include covert support for opposition political groupings by a foreign power , their promotion of hostile propaganda in the press locally and internationally, the encouragement of violence and terrorism , the disruption of industrial relations , economic sabotage and indeed any form of action which generates turmoil and strife likely to have an adverse political effect on the government in question.
Defined in this way, the charge that a destabilisation campaign was waged against the Manley government in 1976 is easier to substantiate. A ‘smoking gun' was found , but the weight of evidence makes it likely that the CIA was at work, in league with the JLP, the Daily Gleaner, and opposition businessmen and trade unionists, to undermine the elected government in Jamaica. More than that one cannot plausibly say.
As Manley himself put it, ‘there have been no Senate Committee hearings into the case of Jamaica and consequently no disclosures at that level.'[22]
Yet , even as it stands, the statement is serious : the meaning of sovereignty and statehood for independent Caribbean countries has to be reassessed . To obtain some perspective , however, it is important to note that the PNP won the elections with which the year of destabilisation culminated by huge margin! It gained all but 13 of the 60 seats in the Jamaican parliament.
By this test destabilisation , narrowly defined , does not seem to have had much effect. In the longer run, the violence and the propaganda took their toll, but what really damaged the Manley regime beyond repair was the decline of the Jamaican economy after 1976.
For this phenomenon explanations have to be sought beyond destabilisation.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTES
1. Michael Manley, Jamaica: Struggle in the Periphery ( London, 1982), p.138
2. Quoted in ibid., p.223
3. The Guardian, 18 July 1976
4. Manley, op.cit,p.213
5. Summarized from ibid., pp.225-9
6. Sherry Keith and Robert Girling, 'Caribbean Conflict: Jamaica and the US', NACLA report on the Americas, xii (1978), p.21
7. Interviews with Jamaica Bauxite Institute (JBI) personnel, July 1985
8. JBI Digest, 1, 3(1976), p.2
9. Keith and Girling, op.cit.,p.29
10. J.Daniel O' Flaherty, 'Finding Jamaica's Way', Foreign Policy, xxxi (1978), p.154
11. Ibid.
12. Manley, op.cit., pp.100-1
13. Ibid., p.116
14. Ibid.
15. Ernst volkman and John cummings, ' murder as Usual', Penthouse. Dec.1977, pp.112-14, 182-90
16. Manley, op. cit., p.117
17. Quoted in Michael Kaufman, Jamaica under Manley: Dilemmas of Socialism and Democracy (London, 1985), p.121
18. Marlene Cuthbert and Vernone Sparkes, 'Coverage of Jamaica in the US and Canadian Press in 1976: A study of Press Bias and Effect', Social and Economic Studies, 27,2 (1978), pp212-13
19. See figures in Kaufman,. cit., App.9.
20.Cuthbert and Sparkes, op.cit., pp.216-18
21. Press Association of Jamaica, Psychological Warfare in the Media: The Case of Jamaica (Kingston, n.d.).
22. Manley, op.cit., p.237
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MarcusGarveyLives
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Posted: Thursday October 5th, 2006 18:19 |
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For a related (the flood of cocaine into African communities) question see: http://www.blackchat.co.uk/theblackforum/forum32/6800.html
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Posted: Thursday February 15th, 2007 09:58 |
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{Excerpt from Dr. Amos N. Wilson's Last Interview* done by Muzunga Nia of RAW (Real Afrikan World, in January 1995 in his hometown of Hattiesburg, Mississippi.}
"RAW: Now you have raised the possibility of genocide before in books such as Black-on-Black Violence. Could you briefly talk about how Black-on-Black crime serves white supremacy by playing a role in our own genocide?
WILSON: Well, what we are experiencing in the African American community is not just confined to America. You'll find this experience in the Caribbean, in Africa, wherever you have large populations of Black people. You go to Brazil Black children are being shot in the streets; people just get in their cars and shoot Black children. You will find this sort of thing going on in Uruguay. A lot of us don't realize that there are large populations of Black People in Central America and South America. Africa is suffering tremendously. You can even look the millions of Blacks in Europe. We are finding that there is a general oppression of Black people across the globe as the global economic system reorganizes itself, and reorganizes itself in a way to leave Blacks out of the global economic system, just as they are being left out of domestic economic systems. What you're getting here when it comes back to Black-on=Black violence are reactions to the dynamic economic changes.
You've got a lot of people who want to lay all of this on family values and the absence of old time religion and things of this nature. And while that's a part of the mix, you cannot just blame this all on the loss of family values. People don't eat values, you know. You have to actually work; you have to feed your family. There are concrete material things that people have to have. The mere training of people in family values is not going to solve this problem. As a matter of fact, when you transform people's material position in the world, you transform their values. So a part of transfor- mation of the values that we complain about is a result of the transformation of the concrete living conditions of Black people.
The key to understanding the relationship that Black-on-Black crime has to white supremacy and genocide is knowing the context in which the problem occurs. Too often people want to talk about the problems that exist in the Black community as if they are unconnected to everything else going on in the country. This is a terrible mistake in analysis. You have to begin with the political and economic context in which a people exist in order to begin to understand their behavior. When Blacks commit violence against other Blacks, they're committing it within a certain political economic context. Violent acts are social acts. We may call them anti-social, but they are still social, whether anti- or pro-, which means that they have to do with the nature of relationships between people. That's what we mean when we use the world social. If we are to understand the social relationship of Blacks to whites and to the social and political system in which we exist When we look at this system under which we exist as Black people, we'll see a connection between it and the kind of behavior the Black community is undergoing at this particular time.
RAW: So you're saying that the rising tide of Black-on-Black crime is a direct result of the position of powerlessness that we currently occupy vis-a-vis the restructuring global economy?
WILSON: Yes, to a very great extent. We don't think of crime as serving a social function. Some people's negative behavior serves the interest of other people. For instance, Black children dropping out of school serves the interests of other people's children, who then don't have Black people to compete against. Our dropping out becomes a service to those who then can enter the positions for which we are no longer in competition.... As a matter of fact, during the first reconstruction, Blacks were robbed of the 40 acres and a mule promised them by the U.S. government as part of the REPARATIONS for slavery. A lot of people think that's just a myth; but that was an actual act of Congress. This would have given Blacks an economic leg up, an economic independence which would have served as a platform for our political independence as well.... the white planter recognized that if you gave Black people this kind of land, they would not be able to use them in the cotton fields; they wouldn't be able to profit from their destitution. It's important to understand how you actually create poverty in a people so that you can use their services. You strip them of everything; therefore, they become utterly dependent upon you, and you use their dependecy as a means of creating your own wealth and power.
Black people aren't poor by accident. This serves the interest of somebody. The energy that we put into hurting each other is the energy that we can't use to compete against other people. The stereotypes of Black-on-Black crime serve as a justification for other people to take advantage of us. But in a deeper sense, it serves to hide the criminality of whites. It makes us think that whites in America are not criminals and have not created a criminal.
RAW: Now is it not true that numerically and statistically, whites commit more violent crimes than Blacks?
WILSON: Definitely, just as there are more whites on welfare. Because of the media, you are lead to believe that Blacks are the only ones on welfare. But whites get far far more money out of the U.S. government. Most of the money distributed by the U.S. government is paid to middle class white folks and upper-classs white folks while we are made to believe that it is the poor Blacks and the people on welfare that are getting the bulk of the money from the federal government. You see, a service is performed there. While the white uper class robs the nation of its wealth, and even robs the white middle class, the elites point to Blacks as the ones who are bankrupting America.
This is why you get image after image of Blacks on welfare, Blacks on crime. Those images serve the interest of those who are taking advantage of the system and want to hide how and what they are doing to the system. Our so-called criminality, our so-called being on welfare serves a useful political and economic purpose in the society."
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Posted: Sunday March 18th, 2007 12:46 |
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The main source of slaves for African traders were people captured as prisoners of war or kidnapped and sold into slavery. Prior to the transatlantic trade, POWs were ransomed back to their home kingdom or integrated into the society where they were captured - in which case they performed slave labor for a fixed time until granted freedom. Such slaves were permitted to ascend the social structure of the community. "Captives were chained together and marched to the coast where they were locked up in wooden cages to await the arrival of the next European trading ship." (Kevin Shillington, History of Africa, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1989, 1995, p.175-176)
"So voracious was the appetite for slaves that slavery was transformed and extended far into the African hinterland. Conflicts and even wars were created simply to provide slaves." (James Walvin, Black Ivory, Blackwell Publishers Ltd, Oxford, 1992, 2001, p.24)
Early into the slave trade, at least 60 percent of slaves were prisoners of war. That amount increased to 70 percent during the 17th century. The Dahomey and Ashanti kingdoms supplied a large share of prisoners of war for sale. "By the peak years of the 18th century, Europeans imported between 283,000 and 394,000 guns each year into West Africa....But the value of these weapons to Africans often transcended their monetary cost. Sought after for the power - and terror - they could create, European guns became an important lubricant of the African slave system, valuable in themselves but much more important in helping to catch more slaves....slave traders sold guns to Africans to increase their own supplies of slaves." (ibid, p.28)
http://www.skidmore.edu/uww/online/kersey/operation.htm
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Posted: Saturday June 9th, 2007 15:15 |
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Arms, Africa, and America’s Inmate Industry
By Ezrah Aharone
What do Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms have in common? Well, to start with, they have a clear connection to crime and violence, which is why the U.S. government ATF bureau exists. Beyond that, all three were primary commodities of the Triangular Trade for slaves. In addition, all three have since remained chief factors that inordinately affect the health and lives of Black people across the globe.
No other metal product of the Triangular Trade was more significant, cruel, and lasting in impact than guns. Firearms were mass-produced in America according to standards of that day, and Africa was the primary export destination. What began as modest tinkering in small metal shops, with enslaved African expert-blacksmiths, was fused with Euro-American greed and aggressiveness. The end product evolved into what is today’s high-tech multitrillion-dollar U.S. arms industry.
The heavy export of guns to Africa during the slave era, shares commercial and strategic commonalities with the current saturation of illegal guns in Black communities and the escalation of arms in Africa used in cycles of coups and countercoups. Since political independence, Africans have been fighting and killing each other in revolutions, as though shooting and hacking off limbs are sports.
No one knows the exact number of millions killed and swallowed whole in these wars where even infants and grandmothers are expendable. Three things however are certain. One, the wake has produced over 8 million refugees who live in abject poverty. Two, American arms suppliers account for over 60 percent of weapons used, where assault rifles have sold on African streets for as little as $6. Three, African conflicts typically involve energy and mineral resources, of which the majority of financiers, distributors, and consumers are located in America, Western Europe, and Israel.
Oil, diamonds, gold, cobalt, and chromium are some of the choice resources sought, which the West often uses as bartering mediums to arm self-styled African revolutionaries. The American public then becomes aghast in open-mouth astonishment when watching the evening news and seeing dead, decomposed bodies scattered about African streets, while skinny 11-year old boys walk around with assault weapons, smoking Marlboros.
The question of who is behind the sale of these arms is too often overlooked. But whenever scenes from the next African conflict appear on your television, look closely, because you just may see the “Made in America� label on the trigger.
Meanwhile back on the Black American front, gun slayings continue, with Black women and children likewise being left unprotected from the fray. But there’s a major difference … These killings don’t concern sovereignty or political struggles or natural resources. Brothers in America shoot our own people over narcotics and “beefs.� As long as these “street wars� remain self-destructive and confined to this level, there’s no cause for alarm from the government. Besides, the Iran-Contra Scandal was factually connected to killings, gunrunning, and drug dealings in Black communities – And nobody was ever held accountable.
Due to known business interests, the U.S. government seems nearly as apathetic about firearm deaths of Blacks today, as during the slave trade. This is because Black homicides and handguns are linked to an economic environment conducive to ever-elaborate schemes of White profiteering. Just as guns and murders were central to the success of the multitrillion-dollar “slave industry,� they now are central to the success of the multitrillion-dollar “inmate industry.�
Federal inmates work for $1.15 an hour at 106 prison factories under the Justice Department entity called UNICOR (Unique Corporation). In 2005, UNICOR supplied goods worth over $750 million to the federal government. What’s notable is that more than 60 percent of its work is contracted by the military. Proponents say UNICOR fulfills Pentagon and defense needs quicker and more efficiently than any private enterprise could. According to the Encyclopedia of Prisons and Correctional Facilities (EPCF), UNICOR produces everything from military uniforms, to Kevlar helmets, to wires for weapons, to cables for missiles and helicopters.
EPCF reports that the U.S. military profits from selling some of these same prison-made products overseas, where they “fall into the hands of violent regimes,� of which African insurrectionists are among. Like enslaved blacksmiths who made guns that were shipped to Africa in a revolving door process to capture more slaves, inmates now manufacture components for weapons that are shipped to Africa to destabilize governments in a revolving door process to acquire more resources.
Our 17th century ancestors probably never imaged that their initial tinkering of gun making would spawn into a multitrillion-dollar arms industry with a subsidiary inmate industry. And, it definitely was even more inconceivable to them that, we would degenerate in the 21st century to the point where Black-on-Black handgun homicide is the leading cause of death for young Black males, while death tolls from African revolutions are too vast to accurately count.
~~~~~~~~~~
Copyright © 2007 Ezrah Aharone
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History is a people's memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals
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ministerofaction
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Posted: Monday June 11th, 2007 21:40 |
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This is a Grate Question, Who are the Gunmen working for? Here is another great question… where is our investigative journalist? who could go out and find the answer to this particular question, instead of regurgitating press releases, copy or gossip. Don’t like to mention names but the Voice, Nation does come to mind.
We need some fearless journalists who need to make a name for themselves.
Hotep
The Minister
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